In Computer Sales Boom, New Owners Must Be Wary

If your home is among the horde of households that added new computer hardware and software over the holidays, I have some brass-tacks advice for you.

But first let's get the numbers out of the way to see just how many people have jumped on the binary bandwagon and thus might benefit from the advice of a digital Dutch uncle.

The morning-after statistics, emerging as the computer industry sizes up Holiday '94, show that ordinary consumers now are the hottest force in the high-technology marketplace.

The analysts who watch computer retail sales for International Data Corp. are estimating that 5.8 million families added a computer to their homes during the holidays.

By contrast, the entire United States 1994 output of personal computers for homes, offices and schools combined is forecasted to hover around 20 million machines.

That means that in the year-end rush at stores like Computer City, Elek-Tek, Best Buy, Silo, Sears and all the rest, consumers accounted for more than 25 percent of the year's personal computer sales while stocking up for gift giving.

Underscoring the boom, figures released by the Washington D.C.-based Software Publishers Association indicate that 12 million households received add-on software over the holidays.

Maybe more American men got software instead of neckties this Christmas. Who knows, next year the stuff may even outsell Old Spice.

Software Publishers proclaimed consumer software the runaway leader in industrywide sales that had previously been dominated by business purchases.

"The rapid emergence of the consumer market has changed the landscape of the software industry," said David Tremblay, research director for the Software Publishers Association.

"Entertainment software is now the third-largest category of software for the industry," he said. "And with its rapid growth this year, home education software is now about as large as is database software."

Reviewing the binary blowout of the holidays, Tremblay concluded, "The emergence of the consumer market marks a fundamental shift in the character of the industry.

"Companies are having to learn how to make money selling at lower, consumermarket price points and how to sell in traditional retail channels," he noted.

But the need for change cuts both ways.

Just as the computer industry must learn how to deal with America's householders, those householders are going to have to learn how to deal with computers.

Growing millions of home folk face the unique problems and challenges that come with moving one's affairs onto this platform.

So let me cover a few of the start-up basics. And let me hasten to add that some of the suggestions I'll make run contrary to normal wisdom and might sound a bit strange.

For example, the first thing you want to do when you get a new home computer is try to break it.

The reason for this is a phenomenon called infant mortality: If a computer is going to break down, it most likely will do it pretty early in its life. If things get past that first hump, they tend to hum on for years.

Since most computers sold in the consumer channel come with no-questions-asked return privileges for the first 30 days or so, it's best to shake them down quickly.

So start by turning your machine on.

Then don't turn it off for a month.

Next, get a screen-saver program that changes scenes by accessing files on your hard drive every several minutes and run that for the whole month.

Hard drives tend to be the most delicate parts of personal computers, but they are designed to run for years without breakdowns, so these drive-intensive screen savers should pose no trouble. If they do flop, they'll most likely do it in the first several weeks.

Let me recommend Second Nature Software's low-cost series of screen savers for Macintosh and Microsoft Windows machines that sell for $10 to $16, with 10 percent of sales donated to non-profit organizations, including the Nature Conservancy.

My favorite Second Nature set calls up from your hard drive cartoons by Tribune Media Services' Jeff MacNelly and Mike Peters as well as Johnny Hart's wacky drawings from the B.C. strip.

This will serve three purposes. It will protect your monitor's screen during a month of continual uptime, it will give the new hard drive a shakedown to remember and it will make you feel good. The next thing you should do is trot down to Egghead Software, Kmart or some such place and buy a couple dozen floppy disks and back up the software that came on your hard drive.

With profit margins cut to the bone, most companies simply load software onto each hard drive rather than supply the programs on traditional floppy disks. Most new machines include software to walk new owners through the process of making backups of the preloaded software on floppies.

This bit of cheapness on the part of sellers gives new owners a fine opportunity to put the hard and floppy drives through the hoops and spot any glitches early on.